Recent years have seen remarkable progress in miniaturization of the connector structure of an electronic device. This leads to narrowing the pitch between terminals each providing with a contact and increasing the terminal density. With this progress, the connector for electrical connection has been changed to a so-called bellows connector formed by bending a thin plate, from a connector formed by inserting a knife-shaped terminal into a fork-shaped terminal.
For bellows connector, there has been known a connector structure to engage a receptacle connector into a plug connector. The receptacle connector includes a receptacle contact portion which comes in contact with a plug contact portion for electrical connection. The receptacle contact portion is disposed in a housing. The receptacle contact portion has a convex portion formed by bending, and the convex portion is pressed against the plug contact portion. The plug connector includes a plug contact portion which is inserted between the receptacle contact portion and a partition wall in the housing at the time of engaging.
If such a connector structure has a narrowed pitch between terminals, the plug contact portion may be forced to be in contact with the partition wall in the housing. Alternatively, the plug contact portion may be designed to be in contact with the partition wall from the beginning for the compactness and denseness of the connector structure.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2004-288848 discloses that a fiber material such as glass fiber is impregnated into a resin. Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 9-283234 discloses that a housing of a connector is formed by impregnating a fiber material such as glass fibers and carbon fibers into a resin. Generally, such the housing of the connector is expected to have has a greater strength and better formability as compared to a housing of resin into which a fiber material is not impregnated.
However, when a resin into which a fiber material such as glass fibers is impregnated is employed in order to increase the strength of the housing, glass fibers may be exposed out of a surface of the housing or the partition wall in the housing.
In case of engaging the connector structures, the plug contact portion may be cut off by the glass fibers exposed out of the partition wall when the plug contact portion is inserted between the receptacle contact portion and the partition wall. Due to the exposed glass fibers, cutting debris may be formed along the longitudinal direction of the plug contact portion to have a string shape.
The cutting debris of the string shape may contact another plug contact portion and another receptacle contact portion to cause a short circuit.